This essay presents an explicit outline of almost everything that has implicitly governed Laplanche's methodological purpose over the last 30 odd years. Of particular interest in the essay are the following: a critique of Jung and Ricoeur, together with a clear exposition of what impels Laplanche's emphatically anti-hermeneutic approach to Freud; the suggestion of points of continuity between Laplanche's early collaborative publications (with Leclaire and Pontalis) and his subsequent solo work; an account of the singularity of Freud's analytic method and its implications for a textual analysis of Freud; the broaching of the notion of the “exigency” (exigence) of Freud's thought, and its relation to desire.